Dear e-comm players, here's how to beat competition on the next #BigSaleDay

You remember getting peeved by the jacket ads clouding your favourite newspapers around Diwali season last year. You know it was to announce their big bumper sale offers but do you remember which brand had the best plan? Thought as much. The already cluttered e-commerce space gets XXL-cluttered during sale season and not having any key differentiator except a decimal point extra discount doesn’t help either. How does one use media to solve this problem? That’s the brief Brand Equity gave young media aspirants eager to win their ticket to Cannes Lions 2016. Of the several ideas that were presented, we thought these five could be of some use to the e-commies. Add to cart or discard? Take your pick.

1. Link their purchase to the next

E-commerce players are a hotbed of data. The likes of Amazon use consumers’ purchase data to gauge their taste and recommend products. But why not take it up a notch? Track their past purchases to suggest what they could possibly buy next. So, if X has bought a laptop, suggest a laptop sleeve. A scratch guard post a phone’s purchase. Maybe clear 10 random users’ wishlist as a part of a special consumers’ week — a good way to reward loyal customers, something e-commerce players have reportedly failed to do so far.

2. Keep the discount a mystery

Block inventory in mediums like print, online, outdoor, TV; but don’t roll out any ads except a blank sheet with ‘Blocked by XYZ player to announce their best offers’. Go with this teaser campaign to build curiosity, earn free media, and announce the offers in the third phase of the campaign. And pray consumers fall hook, line and sinker for your ‘hook’.

3. Move on from Facebook Tagging to Product Tagging

Instead of interrupting the consumer while he’s happily consuming his favourite media content, align your ad to their content by contextual word mapping and product tagging across media like TV, print, cinema, and online. What does that mean, you ask. For instance, to capture the audience watching ‘Ki & Ka’ in a theatre: Use a screengrab from one of the songs, tag products showing discounts on them, play the slide during interval. Perhaps that’s how you can go from being intrusive to being interesting.

4. Set an alarm for them

Create a plug-in alarm that people can download and use as a reminder for your big sale. You can further use it to remind people of the remaining items in their cart. Better still, allow users to share updates of their wishlist status with others on social media. And sit back and enjoy the multiplier effect it has the potential to create.

5. Make the consumer the deal ambassador

Target the star-struck users, offer them the chance to help their favourite celeb buy things for their loved ones. The modus operandi: Urge consumers to add to cart stuff for Dhoni’s wife or Salman’s sister, find the best deal for them. They thank the said user with a gift and a video. And the consumers hopefully buy something for themselves too in the whole process.

Winner’s Edge

The duo — Akshay Brijkrishan and Nivedita Ravishankar of Maxus — had a no-frills presentation that focused on numbers and had its heart in the right place. No wonder their pitch was centered around winning the consumer’s share of heart. There we re many things they got right in terms of insight which other teams may have mentioned but didn’t delve deeper into: Like focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets and getting the consumer to pick the e-comm brand basis its quality of engagement versus quantum of discount.

They presented ideas like rewarding consumer loyalty and tracking their purchase record to suggest the next buy and married them with the right media vehicles — like using banner ads to get customers to auto-upgrade; calling some loyal customers, offering them an upgrade; clearing carts and fulfilling wishlists of some and filming their reactions to share on social media, et al. Like many other teams, they too allocated the largest part of their budget to TV. But unlike most other teams that felt it’s because TV is expensive or still the biggest medium, they felt it was only to spread awareness in Tier 2 and 3 markets. Their media plan stated that with the given budget of `15 crore to be spent over three months, they will be able to reach 85% of their target audience. Realism and a little work on details like value of media worked in their favour.